Innovation under capitalism definitely looks like determining what forms of animal cruelty will allow meat to cook twice as fast.
Completely by accident. If squeezing a little more profit had lead to meat taking ten times longer to cook, they would've done that
Indeed, profit is the only motive and everything else is an accident. People attribute positive effects to capitalism in the same way horoscopes work.
Sure capitalism might breed efficiency and innovation, well except for when it breeds monopolies, and price fixing rackets, and wage theft, and outsourcing, and enshittification, and horrible pollution, and anti unionization propaganda, and... Wait I forget what point I was going to make.
It very efficiently gets someone else rich!
Counterpoint, while cook time might not make a direct profit like ~~fatter~~ faster-growing chickens do, it would probably still make the chicken more desirable due to the decreased cook time; especially if you could advertise it as a feature.
"Life's fast, so why isn't cooking faster? Are you tired of your chicken taking hours to cook? Buy Bryson's Chicken Breasts!
"Bigger!
"Fatter!
"Healthier!
"and faster!
"Our chicken breasts are designed, formulated and engineered to be as big, nutritious and delicious as possible; while also being faster and easier to cook than other brands. So why spend hours cooking normal chicken breasts, when you could cook Bryson's Chicken Breasts in a fraction of the time? Buy Bryson's; you won't regret it."
Edit: misread "faster" as "fatter" lmao. Point still stands though.
That assumes that the consumer notices the change if it's bad. Just compare a strawberry that you grew yourself to store bought ones. The store bought is completely tasteless in comparison und usually still white inside because it's more profitable. And the consumer doesn't care. And by the time the consumer notices all alternatives are already pushed out of the market so now they don't get the choice to go for the more expensive but also more tasty one
Taking ten times longer to cook would have have some big cost disadvantages though, both fast food restaurants and regular consumers wouldn’t like it.
It's easier to just not give them any other options for so long that they forget it was ever any different.
The egg yolk one fascinates me. Maybe I should make some custards, tempting.
I wonder if home-raised chicken eggs are closer to old ones
It might, but you would need to track down a heritage breed. Modern chickens have been selected to grow big and fast. They also lay eggs FAR faster. This, unfortunately, lowers the quality of individual eggs. Poor diet and conditions reduce this further. Home raised chickens fix the diet and conditions, but still use fast laying breeds.
Alternatively, duck eggs tend to be a LOT better. They have not been as heavily selected for laying speed. They also, naturally, have a more intense yoke. I grew up in a pub, in my youth. It took a while, but the customers eventually made the connection between our unusually tastes pies and pastries, and the pair of ducks living in the gardens.
Nah, it's not possible anymore. They were pre-atomic chickens and they are lost to the world.
You motherfucker, I believed you. For a split second "pre-atomic chickens" were a thing that existed and then you took it away from me.
I mean they were a thing, they just didn't have bigger yolks. Or did they? We'll probably never know.
Local eggs are more flavorful and paradoxically they're far runnier than store eggs. I'm not sure what causes the runniness
I heard once that chicken tastes blander than it used to, hence the need for more seasoning.
Not a sign of the times, a sign of the raising. I've eaten Perdue and I've eaten small farm, free-ranging chickens. The latter is often leaner, tougher and incomparably more flavorful.
https://www.bottomlineinc.com/life/food/food-really-doesnt-taste-as-good-as-it-used-to
In short: chicken got breed for quick growth, lost taste in the process.
It depends of how they are raised. Here in France, we have a "Label Rouge" sign : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Label_Rouge . Label rouge chickens are like twice the price or more, but they are flavorful compared to the cheapest ones. There are other great labels (Loué, Janzé, bio, Nouvelle agriculture, ...).
I think it's just that white folks' tastes have become more accustomed to stronger seasoning. Mine certainly have since I was a kid in the 1960s. Of course some of that is just age progression for an individual, but it's mostly cultural mixing. And following the Penzeys advice to "Season Liberally."
I wonder if it's that or just availability. Some of these things are brought to places now because of our much improved infrastructure.
I wonder if farm-raised chickens' eggs are the exception to the last point? They're pretty superior in most ways from what I know.
Which, regarding baking, is nothing, to be fair.
My chickens’ eggs have GIANT dark orange yolks inside of a plethora of different colored shells!
Make a custard and report back how many eggs it took!
I think that's mostly incidental, more related to the time supermarket eggs spend in storage before they make it to your plate
That has a part in it for sure, but chickens raised on small farms are handled way better too. Better fed, better rested, better exercised. I'd have trouble believing that doesn't have any impact on the final result.
I wouldn't be surprised if the difference in feed is the biggest thing
Regarding eggs... Somehow it seems that eggs have gone rather small. When I have to buy eggs in the supermarket, they often have only S and M sizes, and they are usually at the lower end of the weight group. I have checked, M oficially range from 53 to 63 grams here, but I've tested several egg cartons I've bought at supermarkets here and had only one egg of 60g in a total of 80, everything else was usually in the 51(!) to 58g range. In comparison to the XL eggs I usually buy at the local farm shop, this is quite a difference.
Interesting that egg sizing labels aren't that universal. In the U.S. most big stores primarily stock Large (minimum weight 56.7g) and Extra Large (63.8g), while Jumbo (70.9g) is still probably more common than Medium (49.6g).
(My methodology for getting weights was that I used the government labeling requirements for minimum weight per dozen, converted ounces to grams, divided by 12).
Our ranges are S for anything below 53g, M to just below 63g, L to just below 73g, and XL for anything 73g and up. I had eggs in the 85+g range from that farm shop occasionally (that must have been a monster chicken!), and even one 10-pack with 7 double yolk eggs once.
Once they had an offer of size S eggs, and even small ones for that group. They were not much bigger than Quail eggs and from the first layings of young hens. I bought a box of them for fun and fried three of them for breakfast. My son took a look at the tiny little egglet I placed on his plate and he asked me what I had done to the rest of the egg...
I believe the cooking changes happened, but I don't believe the authors conclusions as to why the changes happened. For instance, it was common place just 25 years ago that the Thanksgiving turkey was slow cooked for like 12 hours and basted while it sat in a pan, or kept and cooked inside an oven bag. More recent times, word has spread that it ends up way better to cook it faster at a higher heat. Not because anything about the birds changed, but because we became more educated at cooking and taking temps and different methods were able to be tried and shared faster due to the internet existing.
I'm betting chicken always could have cooked faster. I'm also betting something else is the reason for the custard recipe besides yolks binding less. Eggs changed a lot over the mass production thing, but nothing has reported a change or drop in the proteins. There's also a 100 ways to make an egg custard so chances are more that the older recipe had several differences compared to the newer one. I'm sure more modern egg custard recipes are different again. A lot of the popular ones today don't just use the yolks and don't even use whole milk. Cooking methods always change.
I'm betting chicken always could have cooked faster.
Chicken can be cooked to temperature quickly, but that alone likely wasn't enough. We know this for plenty of cuts of pork and beef that the connective tissue needs time to break down, not just a pure cook to temperature (see braising, smoking, and sous vide techniques).
Something like coq au vin, which was developed for cooking older, tougher roosters, traditionally calls for a low and slow cook to break down the tougher animal.
You can also see the difference when buying cuts like vaca vieja (old dairy cattle slaughtered for meat), which calls for different preparation based on the tougher meat.
So no, I can believe the meat itself is very different today, and the recipes adjusted to the change in ingredient characteristics. We've documented that the manner of raising animals is totally different, so why would you be skeptical that the meat is different?
I’m betting chicken always could have cooked faster.
A few months ago my mother bought a free range chicken for lunch. It took over twice the ordinary time needed for cooking a chicken. The difference was massive and obvious, no way is there an another explanation.
They just used to overcook chicken.
Do you look at the old pictures (photos, paintings) of food and see overcooked chicken?
Age and activity level absolutely effect how "tough" meat is. I've raised and cooked both heritage breed chickens and modern broilers. The former take 2-3 times as long to reach maturity, are far more active, and as a result are "tougher". You can cook them just as fast a broiler, but the end result is going to be tough/chewy meat. The longer cooking time is needed to achieve equally tender meat.
It's the difference between cooking a rib-eye and a brisket.
The point the article is making is that it's not just a matter of us having different ways of cooking for these recipes... it's that the old recipes simply don't work because of the differences in our ingredients now. Just because one can cook a custard differently isn't the point: it's that the old recipes simply don't work now because the egg is different. Likewise follow the same chicken recipe and it calls for cooking 45 minutes and now we realize the chicken is done and tender in 20... this ain't your great-grandmothers chicken.
btw that cookbook is incredible. I have the most recent edition and it has so much information and such a deep well of amazing cooks. Highly recommend!
Funny how the objections ITT are over the items that would cause people to have to reevaluate the ethics of their dietary choices.
And there are no more recipes for passenger pigeon.
Maybe in the olden days people liked their custards more fluid?
Mayyyybe but generic store-bought eggs have TINY yolks compared to my chickens’, so I’m guessing it’s also the cruelty.
That tracks, though. If chicken tastes like everything and we are losing things to extinction. Obviously, chicken has less to taste like.
so basically, 'shrinkflation' has hit the commodities
We're focused on cooking and the science behind how it changes our food. Some chemistry, a little biology, whatever it takes to explore a critical aspect of everyday life.
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